They Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold History of the Enslavement of Whites in Early America by Michael A. Hoffman II is a historical revisionist work that argues that hundreds of thousands of white people—primarily from the British Isles—were kidnapped, trafficked, and subjected to brutal chattel slavery in the American colonies. Hoffman contends that this "hidden" history of white servitude has been deliberately omitted or suppressed from conventional historical narratives. The book is considered highly controversial and is often characterized as revisionist history. While some readers praise it for revealing "hidden" or overlooked aspects of indentured servitude and white poverty in early America, mainstream historians generally differentiate between the legal, lifelong, and hereditary status of chattel slavery for Africans and the contract-based, time-limited status of indentured servitude for Europeans. The book is sometimes used to challenge standard narratives of the history of American slavery.